I think the "coalition v. tribe" title is more apt for the 2009 inaugaration. Coalition isn't a proper term for Mr. Obama's radical, idealistic, and unyielding ideas for the second term. He seems to be going the route of playing his hand in an unrelenting fashion in the second term which could end up backfiring.

Now the ball is back in his court to come up with cuts to avoid sequestration. Most probable outcome is sequestration for which it will be hard to just brush aside by playing the game of blaming the other side for his own unyielding view as he would with the debt ceiling "ransom" rhetoric. Handling of the debt ceiling was well played politically by republicans--the first recent minor political win.

The illustration strikes me as inappropriate. Does this not dredge up old, racist stereotypes of Indians (supposedly for their 'tribalism')? I can't help but wonder if there wasn't a better way for the artist to make the point.

"But in democratic politics it is usually better to be a coalition, pragmatically organised around interests, than a tribe, sternly loyal to a creed." Where's the evidence for this? The founders said exactly the opposite.
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This is an admission that the Republicans have principles whereas Democrats do not. The Democratic coalition is united only by the idea of "more for us." The role for politicians is to broker the deal.
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America is based on a highly-charged political philosophy. A group based on a political philosophy is hardly a "tribe." People fight for their ideas. A coalition is by definition a group of people who have little in common. A coalition commands little allegiance and falls apart as soon as the interests of its members diverge.

Sure, political action should not be described as tribal - at least in the present stage. Voters can change their opinions and swing their vote. I have just used the word tribe as a joke in a previous post. In the same way as I referred to the Europeans as those ever fussing white tribes. Though I believe they can overcome their national differences and even agree to form an European Union - or not.

Perhaps I wasn't clear, and thanks for the opportunity to expand. The founders thought of Europe as tribal, as you say. America was based on reason and the Lockean philosophy of rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence. Government has a specific legitimate purpose and exceeding those tasks was illegitimate. Anyone could be on American because anyone could assent to that philosophy and in so doing become American.
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To the extent that American politics is a tribe - white rural protestants plus the business class - vs. a coalition - blacks, hispanics, Catholics, feminists, and white upper-middle-class academics - we have become exactly what the founders tried to avoid. The new ruling coalition isn't fond of the American political philosophy because it limits their power. Liberalism is inconvenient. It's passé. They believe in democracy - relatively unlimited power for government and their majoritian-based coalition - and little else. Sunshine, good government and social justice are guaranteed - all you have to do is give them enough power. They say this out loud - see Louis Seidman's op-ed "Let’s Give Up on the Constitution" in the NY Times. He's a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown and understands exactly what he's advocating. The founders feared this and would have found it illegitimate.
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Lexington endorsed coalition-based politics over tribe but never mentions the philosophy to which this newspaper supposedly subscribes.

one only has to suffer through the biased vitrol of untruth that is the Economist's "coverage" of the progress - or read Lexington's increasingly ingenious attempts to mollycoddle/ cover the Party of NO's sins (yea. sins) to be convinced how EASY it is "to convey how annoying many Republicans found Barack Obama’s second inauguration"

"One more heave" really means "We can't believe it's not 1984 anymore, and our Reagan pronouncements don't work." Just like the Democrats in 1980 "We can't believe it's not 1964 anymore and our Roosevelt/Kennedy pronouncements don't work." The most imaginative things the Republicans have come up with since Reagan were all thrown overboard in 2012. The GOP has a losing demographic hand, and George W. Bush's disastrous presidency accelerated the process. Just as the Democrats had a losing hand in the 1970s, and then Jimmy Carter's disastrous presidency accelerated the process.

Just as I wondered yet again at the lack of attribution in this magazine, I glanced up and saw the name Lexington. How fortuitous. I am reminded of my own sophomore year when having just read Freud's Totem and Taboo, I felt like I had been given a new pair of glasses. Fortunately for my mates the effect was temporary.

In any case the totem analogy is not bad. And it is remarkable that this Lexington person is able to abstract so much from "absolutism for principle".

My guess is that the reason for his name appearing ahead of his byline is that the paper rightly desires some insulation. Then again it might be that he took a loss for the privilege. That would be fair.

To maintain a functioning two party system, each has to compete for the middle third of the electorate, and ignore the ten percent on its extreme. Rove's 50%+1 was a confession that the GOP had lost too many centrists since 1995 (I was one), and that to remain competitive, it was necessary to mobilize the dregs of the Right. But once your base includes so many of extreme inclinations, it becomes very hard to move back to the center, because the centrists will not trust you, and the Yahoos will not go away quietly.
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If the Republicans stay as they are, and manage to survive, we will need at least three parties. I would very much like to see a centrist party that strips both Democrats and Republicans of their moderates.

In November I voted for a centrist candidate. Now it turns out he wasn't so centrist after all, and I feel betrayed.
If he decides to govern from the left, I'm going to remember that in 2014 and 2018, and I won't be the only one.
Consider gun control. I'm not against it, but the push was on to get it done. There was a mandate! Until Democratic senators from rural areas went home and got an earful. Turns out a lot of people didn't vote for that.
The President had better consider carefully who the key parts of his coalition victory are. Otherwise, the Republicans will stage a comeback based on moderate voters fleeing Democratic arrogance.

You know, part of the problem is the NRA/FOX/GOP/TEA Propaganda Party refusing ANY moves to improve safety. Pres. Obama got them outraged by suggesting training up the police to handle gun-wielding criminals.

This uncompromising right-wing attitude has engendered an equal and opposite reaction on the other side. If the Left takes advantage of a tragedy that touches the vast majority of Americans, and the right still refuses to budge, the result will be further erosion of the GOP and the NRA.

Obstinate conservatism has almost always ended in disaster, which they then blame on leftists.

No. Transparent propaganda - the Left's or Fox's - is not the problem. The problem is I voted for the President twice because he ran as a centrist, and it turns out he really isn't. The Republicans have not been "plowed under," and centrists like me will make that vividly clear if the Democrats claim a non-existent leftist mandate.

If the Tea Party faithful want to maintain their integrity and their commitment to their principles (whatever they are), they are going to have to secede from the Republican Party compromisers. Personally, I'd be happy with a 5 party system: Libertarians, Tea Party, Republicans, Democrats, and Greens. In my district, only the Tea Partiers don't run their own candidates for office; they have made a devil's bargain with the Republican establishment.

But upstart parties don't have a chance until we break the establishment's right to Gerrymander districts, which puts my Congressman in a city 150 miles away instead of in the one with its city limits across the street. Nobody is even thinking of how to accomplish that yet.

Nonsense. We have a winner-take-all electoral system. It makes no sense for people to split off from one of the main parties. You don't get proportional representation if you win a large fraction of the vote, you just lose.

Um, wouldn't Libertarians, Tea Party, and the GOP form a coalition against the Democrats and Greens? Wouldn't that be pretty much the same situation we have today, but with less party discipline and with more of us having no say in nominating the main candidates?

Maybe it's time then to move to proportional representation. It would better represent the population and would help isolate the extremes, enabling comprimise to happen across the middle. Alternatively, instant-runoff voting can be implemented.

For the good of the country, the Republicans should block as much progressive crap as they can. Progressive agendas mean no growth. If the president is allowed to have a vast progressive agenda, it will mean 4 more years of little to no growth. This will result in Obama going down in history as a bad president.

And if the Republicans take the white house, watch out progressives!
they will do by regulation exactly the opposite of what Obama has done and undo everything he has done because it isn't in law.

I don't get how Lexington can write one article saying how Obama's tactics will not end well, and then write this article. You were right the first time Lexington, this isn't going to end well...the country's pendulum will shift back, then the progressives will be on the run.

And oh by the way, how I am going to laugh when the world goes from the warm phase back to the cold phase and all the AGW folks will crawl back into their holes and pretend that the never said we are all going to die from global warming. For millions of years this Earth has gone from ice age to brief interglacials. Do people really think this periodicity has somehow stopped. That people are responsible for weather on Earth? Delusions of grandeur is all I can say.

Stanford-Berkeley-Grad, you do at least acknowledge the basic physical fact that carbon dioxide gas does absorb radiant energy emitted by the sun, correct?

If you took two clear, sealed containers of equal volume, one containing regular atmospheric air, and the other containing 50% regular air and 50% carbon dioxide, and set them out in the sun for three hours, would the temperature in the two containers be equal? If not, which one would have a higher temperature?

Humans burn over 8 BILLION TONS of coal each year, and burn over 30 BILLIONS BARRELS of petroleum each year. This is millions of years of stored energy, being released in a geological instant. Is it really unreasonable to deduce that releasing this much carbon dioxide gas each year could cause the atmosphere to absorb more radiant solar energy, leading to an increase in average temperatures? In fact, wouldn't it be unreasonable to think otherwise?

This isn't to say that all humans are going to die from the temperature rise. However, real affects such as sea level rises will cause massive property damage. If you raising crops right on the edge of a desert, an increase in the size of that desert would have a very real adverse affect on your livelihood.

The planet will survive any AGW, but it could have a negative impact on humans living today. We'll have to weight the pros and cons of any proposed response, but basic physics is basic physics.

The Conservative surge, from the "culture wars" to George W. Bush and his neocons to the Tea Party, was a political movement powered by tribalism. And for the money that funded it, it was useful.

But the GOP's way out of its current wilderness is not very clear. Politics is the art of marrying public ideology to private agendas, and the agendas of the party's big backers will be hard mate up with an ideology that reaches much outside the tribe.

On the other hand, a party that wins nearly half the popular vote is an asset that would be very difficult to replace. Certainly no third party seems plausible. So it seems inevitable the faces of the GOP will change, both public and private. But it will take time, maybe enough time for some of the old ones to die off.

Eight years ago a Republican presidential candidate won reelection by a fairly large margin. Two years ago Republican candidates swept the House in one of the largest landslides in American history. This year, an uninspiring Republican candidate lost by around 3%. In 2016, all evidence points to a Republican resurgence as the 2010-slate of candidates is experienced enough to run for President. You'll have to face the likes of Rubio, Christi, Jindal, Ryan, Walker, and others. I'd hardly be sounding the trumpet of victory if I were you.

Perhaps meeting the night of his FIRST Inauguration to plan how they would oppose his every move may qualify(Check out the PBS Frontline special on that)?

Maybe having leadership "vow to make him a one term President" would do, even if that meant voting against ideas that originated on their side of the aisle (Obamacare) or filibustering their own amendment (McConnell)?

Would challenging everthing from his citizenship(read: birthers) to his patriotism (read: every socialist/marxist/"he'z a moozlem!" attack hurled his way) to delegitimize his presidency qualify?

Obama could say that "The Sun Will Rise In The East" and Fox News, the Tea Party, and a majority of the GOP would be facing West at dawn so they could scream YOU LIE!

As for 'balancing those budgets', I assume you are referring to the Ryan Budget plan which would require heavy doses of "Clap Harder, Tinkerbell" to even approach the realm of reality. Were you this upset during the W administration's budget follies- you know, when "deficits don't matter" per Darth Cheney?

Let's stop with the false equivalency, alright? The GOP has de-evolved the last 4+years....

As with everything else, this is just a matter of perspective. The address I read sounded like "No concessions. No negotiations. And I'll blame the gridlock on you". So more of the same for the next 4 years...
You are right about the Republican weakness. They cannot promise goodies and gifts and "benefits" and "entitlements" to various groups like Mr Obama. They have to come up with something else. Now, surrendering, like Dems and lots of analysts advocate is not an option. They have a commitment to the 61 mn voters who opposed Mr Obama (against his 66 mn supporters). This is a sizeable portion of the country - trying to characterize it as a tribe does not make it so.
The article also glosses over an important constituency: the people who are bankrolling this goverment spendfest. Countries which have sound fiannces can afford not to pay attention to creditors, but that is not the U.S. today. It is easy to forget investors because they have been quiet so far, but that can chamge very fast. Greece was OK until the day is wasn't. "Oh, we control our currency", the spenddrift says. Yeah, and the Fed has done an excellent job in crowding out other source of finance to this incontinent government, but that can't go on forever. Mr Obama might get his dreams of Democrat hegemony shattered if the markets turn against him. Antagonizing the other side of the aisle might not seem so smart then.

On the right, a rational debate on gun control remains "taboo"? You what?
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There have been many discussions on gun control around here, and "gun control" supporters are, almost without exception, ignorant, dishonest, and completely absolutist in their beliefs. There's no point whatever in trying to have a "rational debate" with people who hate you, who want to destroy you, and who are utterly uninterested in facts, figures, or indeed any kind of evidence at all.
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I've said it before and I have to say it again: the Economist in the old days was not like this. In the old days, a correspondent might have disagreed with the views of people he was reporting on, but he still always represented them accurately and fairly. It seems to me that in the case of US Republicans, today's reporters aren't even interested in trying.

Really Alex? TE has always editorialised and Lexington (along with their other similar columns, like Bagahot) have always been editorial. A reasonable view of 'editorial' means that it expresses an opinion. So TE is not changing when it editorialises about US politics -- whether you like their opinion and reasoning, or not

In your irrational, absolutist statements, you simply confirm the editorail position regarding the issue of debating about the issue of 'guns' and the ownership and availability in the US.

And Morgan also pretends he is unbiased. At least the right are explicitly conservative. It is true he is one of the more extreme elements, but virtually all news networks (including conservative ones too like O'Reilly) are pro-gun control now as well.

"It is true he is one of the more extreme elements..."
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Actually, Morgan reflects the general US consensus, in that a majority would like to see more gun control, either in background checks, semi-automatics, and/or limits on magazines.
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So, if Morgan reflects the consensus in the US, how could that be viewed as extreme? In fact, wouldn't the extreme view be those on the minority right?

Morgan does not at all reflect a consensus. Mr. Morgan would like to ban ALL semiautomatic weapons, and that is a position that is opposed by the vast majority of Americans. Only a small percentage of guns in this country are NOT semiautomatic.

The only consensus that exists on the voter level is that it is a good idea to expand background checks, and to do something about mental health. Although before background checks are expanded to cover private sales, the system will need to be revamped to prevent placing overly onerous demands on private buyers and sellers. For example, allow people to run a check online rather than through a FFL.

He is still one of the more extreme based on how he treats other people. His end goals might not be so extreme but he is extreme in his methods. But even his end goals are extreme as he would like to ban most guns in USA, even if at the moment he is only talking about rifles. Or extreme by calling the constitution 'your little book'.

And seeing as around half the country want some gun control and the other half don't (it differs depending on how you ask the question - TE did an interesting piece a few days ago on this) if you are on either side you are bound to be seen as extreme to some extent as there is little middle-ground.

Data guru Nate Silver disagrees, and provides data showing that most in the US support stricter gun control, per the following -
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"The mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., appears to have galvanized support — at least temporarily — for gun control, with polls conducted this month consistently showing support for stricter gun laws in the mid 50s. For example, a New York Times/CBS News poll found that 54 percent of respondents favored tighter gun laws, up from 39 percent in a CBS News poll last April.
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"A Jan. 17 Gallup poll found 53 percent of adults said they would want their representative to vote for the package of gun law reforms that Mr. Obama proposed."
.http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/what-does-public-sup...
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So, that would place Morgan in the middle, and you in the extreme.
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Which therefore suggests that your argument false. It's Morgan who is reflecting middle American views, rather than you.

@Dialectic, unfortunately you seem to have missed the great bulk of polling data on this issue. Here is a link to a summary of Gallup polls. Be sure to read all of them for some interesting conclusions. http://www.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx
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As democrats will see in the next election, Americans in general favor gun rights.
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I'd also like you to note that in one sentence you decry people who make fun of those who are different, while in another sentence you accuse me of being an extremist. Perhaps you should take your own advise.

If you wanna pick a fight with Nate Silver, go ahead. However, Nate has a pretty good track record in understanding data.
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As far as gun rights, Americans in general support the right to have a hunting rifle, etc. However, not the right to buy an AR-15 at a gun show, with no background checks, and to turn around and shoot a Congresswoman, for example.
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As far as the next election, the GOP presently has an approval rating of about 26%, and the Dems at about 47%. Gov. Jindal, in fact, this week said that the GOP has to stop being the "stupid party".
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So, outside of gerrymandered districts, I wouldn't bet on the GOP for the next election just yet.

"I'd also like you to note that in one sentence you decry people who make fun of those who are different, while in another sentence you accuse me of being an extremist."
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I'm not making fun of you, Ken. I'm not calling you a "dirtbag", like our friends on Fox. I'm saying that Morgan's views jive with the majority of Americans, and that yours don't.

Okay, lets try this again. I'll go through and specifically cite polling data that indicates that you are incorrect.
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"Do you think there should be a law banning handguns, except by police and other authorized persons?"
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Yes-24%, No-74%
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"Are you for or against a law which would make it illegal to manufacture, sell, or possess semi-automatic guns known as assault rifles?"
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For-44%, Against-51%.
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Both of those polls are from Dec 19-22, 2012. Piers Morgan would certainly answer in the affirmative to both questions. The second question even uses the loaded term 'assault rifle', even though there's nothing particularly assault-worthy about a gun that resembles a military weapon cosmetically but not mechanically.
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Like I said in my previous post, the only gun-control is discussion that is indisputably approved by the majority of Americans is the expansion of background checks. The ban of high-capacity magazines may also be supported, but we'll see how the public debate shifts over time. I don't think most people realize that even the average police pistol carries more than 10 rounds.
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My views are not at all outside the mainstream. They are very much solidly rooted in mainstream American thought, and backed by centuries of American legal tradition. The extremists in this discussion are the ones that want to transform the gun laws of the United States into something resembling the United Kingdom or Australia, like our friend Mr. Piers Morgan.

Ken, my suggestion - again - is that you take your points to Nate. You can even comment on his blog and tell him how much you disagree with him: www.fivethirtyeight.com
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"My views...are very much solidly rooted in mainstream American thought, and backed by centuries of American legal tradition."
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So was slavery, until it was outlawed due to the emancipation movement brought from - wait for it - the UK.
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Anyway, there were no semi-automatic weapons when the Constitution was written. It's an 18th Century document, Ken, and fully set up to be amended.

"Oh yes, the left-wing media establishment, aka the fourth estate (french reference) or fifth column."
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I'd suggest that it's time for the right to quit with the conspiracy theory stuff, and focus on governing.

I'm missing something here. In the Congress, the Republicans control the House. And, on the evidnece, nobody controls the Senate. The Democrats do have a majority there, but "control" suggests the ability to actually get something done -- which they do not appear to have.